Southern Writer

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Mike Tuggle reviews Tito Perdue's REUBEN

Starry-Eyed Varlet

Tito Perdue is a self-described “problematic author” and “cultural
reactionary.” His novels are bitter and amusing accounts of a Western
civilization that seems hell-bent on suicide. But that culture is
haunted by Perdue’s literary alter ego, Lee Pefley, a man who acts as
both a Jeremiah and cultural guerilla fighter.
Pefley’s sorties apparently arise out of pure outrage, with no
greater aim than to verbally or physically pummel his targets. But
there’s more to Pefley’s often violent outbursts than expressions of
rage. I think Derek Turner of the Quarterly Review was on to
something when, commenting on Tito Perdue’s works, he observed that “the
most misanthropic, the most ‘irrelevant’ and ‘out of touch’ may
secretly be the greatest idealists of all.” In his many battles, Lee
Pefley confronts the remnants of Western civilization with blunt
reminders of what it used to be. His goal is both outrageous and
reactionary: to rekindle a dying flame.
In Reuben, Lee Pefley is facing eternity after a lifetime of
living by his own stern code of honoring the best of Western
civilization and refusing to buckle under to the barbarians that seek
its demise. But Lee has one last trick up his sleeve. He takes in a
diamond in the rough named Reuben and whips the young man into shape
physically and mentally. Armed with Pefley’s greatest weapons, his
numerous hates and lengthy reading list, young Reuben goes out to
“conquer the world” – or at least “the occidental share of it.”
After run-ins with the police, Reuben manages to find a job and
secure a formal education. He gains admission to the California
Institute of Technology, which turns out to be “good for his career and
bad for everything else.”
That line was written by someone familiar with the scam of higher education in contemporary America.
It’s a depraved world Reuben takes on. While residing in California,
the simple act of reading the daily news, with reports of “how a
homosexual was offended in South Dakota,” and that marriage has been
expanded to include unions of more than two people, makes him vomit.
Here’s how the author describes the sunken state of life in the America of the near future:

A golden age of cretinism, followed closely by
hydrocephaly, congenital schizophrenia, and other concomitants of final
decadence. It was as if viruses and bacteria had found the specific
weaknesses of a people given over heart and soul to equality, the most
fatal of social memes. Or rather, it was the worst people who now were
deemed the best, as testified by newspapers and television.

But Reuben has been prepared by a master fighter to strike back at
this mad world. As Hunter S. Thompson would say, “When the going gets
weird, the weird turn pro.” And that’s exactly what Reuben does, turning
the system’s own irrationality against it. When he encounters
irresponsible and degenerate individuals, Reuben uses his massive
physical strength to dole out punishment in the form of cartoonish
violence. Such behavior earns Reuben various epithets: scoundrel,
varlet, vagrant, knave, miscreant.
In between thrashings, Reuben helps organize and lead a circle of
fellow reactionaries, and primes the pump of counterrevolution through a
series of bizarre investments, including a “highly leveraged program of
short-selling the country’s art market index fund.” Reuben manages to
slowly gain access to the machinery of power. One of his reforms is to
eliminate the country’s excessive supply of schools. This has a benign
and surprisingly quick payoff: “Now, almost at once, the country became
more cheerful, the result of young people’s rescue from the sneers and
curdled sophistication that came from imagining they had acquired an
education.”
Reuben, with his clear vision of what he wants, his boundless energy,
and ability to raise billions by manipulating individuals and
institutions too corrupt and enfeebled to know better, successfully
kicks off an “invisible revolution.” To restore Western civilization, he
has Wagnerian opera houses built, brings back classical music, and
places limits on the amount of television that can be broadcast. In the
end, Reuben manages to wean people of their addiction to indulgence and
boredom and prod them back onto their front porches and yards.
By the end of his life, Reuben has pretty much realized Lee Pefley’s
quest. He gives Western civilization a fighting chance by punishing or
exiling those who sought to wreck it, and reforming the economy and
culture to support a livable, more humane, more noble country.
Tito Perdue has a wicked sense of humor and a stinging style of
writing that had me thinking and chuckling as I read it. It’s better
than Confederacy of Dunces, with a much more manly and unpredictable protagonist.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

RACISM OR DIVERSITY?

Racism
is as legitimate and as intellectually defensible as any
other philosophic construct, and offers the added benefit of forestalling the
sort of global homogenization that would bring an end to
diversity.

All
societies must exercise some form of quality control as quality is
defined by each society. Some (most) societies see a connection
between quality and genetics. Even within a particular race there are
distinctions between people with propitious and those with less propitious
genetic inheritances.

Is discrimination WITHIN demographics less wicked,
according to post-modern thought, than discrimination BETWEEN identifiable demographics? The more gifted ones will normally enjoy
a sort of "racism" in the form of higher incomes, better educational
outcomes, and the rest.

Are liberals disturbed that discrimination occurs
not only between, but within all demographics? And can civilization exist
without the inequality produced by genes? Creative cultures, judging
by the record, are always highly unequal.

About Me

I am delighted with the collapse of the western banking system, a deserved denouement that offers us the chance to rid our society of some of the putrefaction - celebrities, billionaires, television - that has so depreciated American culture over the past sixty years. And then, too, we must not ignore the very good possibility that some part of the twelve million illegal trespassers now disfiguring our landscape will see fit to return to the living hells they have created and abandoned.